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This is part two of Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon’s ‘boost your finances with photography’ series. You can read part one of How to take photos you could sell, here.

Everyone is an amateur photographer nowadays, thanks to the incredible power of the cameras on our phones.

But there are pictures and there are pictures.

Read more from Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon:

An expertly operated smartphone can get a shot that looks print-worthy – or sale-able. And who isn’t looking for every possible side hustle right now?

Well, I have persuaded the three favourite photographers I have worked with to confide their top tips to making your pictures look professional.

They have generously shared their secrets so you can emulate – and even monetise – them.

Get the composition right

What’s called your photo ‘composition’ is key.

“If you are photographing a person, you could have the person dead in the middle with an even background on each side to almost outline and highlight them,” Instagram and social media specialist Jim Trouse said.

“This is often more effective if they can be bathed in light.”

For other shots, says Jim, the ‘rule of thirds’ can be a great ‘rule of thumb’.

“What you do is position your subject to one side or the other of the middle,” he said.

“Don’t be afraid to use foreground too – most novice photographers forget about this. Whether it’s a portrait or a landscape, use the lines in the vista to lead the eye.”

What are Jim’s specific tips when it comes to landscapes? It’s a similar deal.

“Use the rule of thirds to position your landscape composition too,” he said.

“Say you are taking a coast pic. Either get bulk sky – so two thirds – or, if you have a really good point of interest in the foreground, position the pic two thirds on that. Never split the photo evenly in two, and make sure the horizon is perfectly straight.”

Story continues

Position your subject to perfection

In what seems a vital tip, another of my favourite photographers also names the ‘rule of thirds‘ right up front.

“My first tip to make any photo look good is to use the rule of thirds and draw the eye to a third of the image,” Nicola Holland, an accomplished wedding, portrait and magazine photographer, said.

Nicola explains that she uses a particular trick.

“If it is a photograph of someone, make sure that their eyes are on one of the lines of the rule of thirds,” she said.

You can see this technique used in two photos Nicola took for my recent book – one for the front cover and one for the back page.

This next tip is also important, and an error I’ve seen many rookies make.

“If you are taking a full-length photo, get people’s feet in it,” she said.

“Otherwise, shoot from the waist up. That’s a big tip – often people crop people’s feet out and it looks like they’ve got no feet!”

And it’s unflattering. Which is not going to make your subject happy or predispose them to let you photograph them again.

Use YOUR feet – and angles

Speaking of feet – use them yourself.

Meg Keene is a photographer who is renowned, in particular, for capturing ‘events’ and candid, action shots.

Accordingly, her advice is: “Remember your client and the story you’re telling and move your feet to tell it.

“I was photographing for the 2022 Women in Media Conference so I was looking for shots that showed the good turnout and an engaging speaker. When Nicole came out from behind the lectern – something no one else had done – I knew I could get a good shot from the back of the auditorium that included the audience, the conference signage, and a good angle on Nicole, all in one.

“There were perfectly good shots to be had from the front row or the far side, but they wouldn’t tell the full story in one shot. So, off I went up those stairs for the 100th time that day. A workout and a banger shot.”

And Meg, your efforts and expertise are greatly appreciated.

Using a phone to fake it

Those three favourite photographers of mine also have tips for how to use a phone to fake it. Firstly, timing is everything.

“For example, if there’s wind blowing, snap the precise moment a subject’s hair and dress are on the same angle,” Jim said.

But, without honed photographic reflexes, years in the making, this can be difficult.

Jim says you will give up a bit of editing functionality but simply putting on the ‘live mode’ on your phone means you will get multiple frames from which to choose – and you’ll never miss the shot.

While Meg says it can be tricky to mimic the old heavy long lens to get dramatic depth of field with an audience shot, she concedes ‘cinematic mode’ works well for portraits.

What apps can you use – if we ask the photographers to speak totally out of school – to cheat and make a phone photo look like the real professional deal?

Nicola likes Lightroom: “You can develop and download pre-sets to make their images really stand out from others.”

“It’s very, very user-friendly.”

Jim is a fan of Hipstamatic, which does a great job of replicating an official single light reflex camera.

“For iPhone, this app shoots authentic-looking analog photographs and has brilliant retro effects.”

Graphic design program Canva also comes highly recommended and allows you to do all kinds of things with your images.

Indeed, Canva is how I stitched together the images for this story.

With massive thanks to our three insiders for their pic insights and phone photography hacks, could you turn a budding photography interest into actual income?

Nicole Pedersen-McKinnon is the author of How to Get Mortgage-Free Like Me, available at www.nicolessmartmoney.com. Follow Nicole on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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BLUETTI today announced that it has been named a CES® 2023 Innovation Awards Honoree for AC500 solar generator. This year’s CES Innovation Awards program received a record high number of over 2100 submissions. The announcement was made ahead of CES 2023, the world’s most influential technology event, happening Jan. 5-8 in Las Vegas, NV.

The CES Innovation Awards program, owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®, is an annual competition honoring outstanding design and engineering in 28 consumer technology product categories. Those with the highest rating receive the “Best of Innovation” distinction. An elite panel of industry expert judges, including members of the media, designers, engineers and more, reviewed submissions based on innovation, engineering and functionality, aesthetic and design.

BLUETTI AC500 is compatible with B300S batteries for up to 18.432Wh capacity. Built-in BMS and LFP battery to ensure higher security and longer lifespan. The 5.000W inverter (10,000W surge) allows AC500 to run high-powered electronics without any fuss. Connecting two AC500s in series can double the capacity, voltage, and power to 36.864Wh, 240V/6.000W for a worry-free off-grid living!

It’s honorable to win the award, which will also inspire us to roll out more innovations to meet the ever-changing power demand in the future. Said James Ray, BLUETTI’s Marketing Director.   

BLUETTI is dedicated to optimizing the way people access and store renewable energy. AC500 features a matchless MPPT solar inverter, allowing a 3000W maximum solar input. Recharging it from 0 to 80% SOC by prime sunshine takes about 1.5 hours.

For an AC500+2*B300S combo, dual recharging via AC and solar can achieve up to 8.000W input rate, so 0-100% charging takes as quickly as 1.8~2.3 hours.

The modular design significantly shrinks the overall size and unibody weight of AC500 while increasing the flexibility to carry or replace each module individually instead of everything at once if necessary. Also, you can free up much space by vertically stacking up multiple battery packs.

More importantly, various AC outlets are specifically designed to take care of heavy-duty appliances with ease, including 1 x 120V/30A L14-30, 1 x 120V/30A TT-30, and 1 x 120V/50A NEMA14-50.

Over the past decade, BLUETTI has been motivated to redefine renewable energy while providing a budget-saving solution to go solar for everyone around the world. Those gasoline generators that produce toxic fumes and annoying noise are a thing of the past.

It may be costly in the first place, though, AC500 is a great investment to avoid high electricity bills in the long run. Being a reliable backup power source with a 24/7 UPS function, it can be seamlessly integrated into the main grid to protect from unexpected power failures and realize peak load shifting to effectively reduce power consumption during peak hours.

New for CES 2023 — CES has partnered with the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS) to showcase the critical role of technology in support of the United Nations efforts to advance human security around the world. For CES 2023, CTA introduced a new category of Innovation Awards showcasing technologies advancing human rights. The Human Security for All category includes eight new tech subcategories.

“I consider my photographs to be a visual history,” Henry said. “Photographers write history, too.”

Henry was always drawn to photographing people and exploring how individuals exert control over others. Her photojournalism career began in 1969 in the heat of the anti-war, civil rights and women’s equality movements. 

Included in the exhibit are Henry’s images from the New York State’s Women’s Meeting, a prelude to the National Women’s Conference, which she also photographed, held at the Empire State Plaza in 1977. Tens of thousands of women gathered to elect delegates for the national conference, Henry recalled. She captured women discussing the elections in front of a wall covered with sheets of papers with thousands of candidates’ names, a cluster of women in the throes of passionate debate in the middle of the plaza and a Mohawk Nation basket weaver seated among her wares. 

“I always tell young (photographers), ‘Don’t ignore the person next to you,’ ” Henry said. “Everyone creates history.”

While Henry recorded the state’s changing sociopolitical landscape, Meyerowitz and Browning captured its urban evolution. Both found their muse in New York City — Meyerowitz in color, which he championed as a respected art form; Browning in the black and white film of his cumbersome, early 20th century camera.

While Browning started in front of the camera as a slapstick actor, even being one of the celebrity faces plastered on war bonds during World War I, he moved behind the camera in 1919 to explore cinematography, directing, avant-garde filmmaking and photography.

Browning’s photos capture the city as it was being recreated, said Ira Meistrich, who rescued and donated Browning’s massive collection of thousands of photographs, film negatives, experiments with color and photo montage and correspondences with Kodak. Browning would lug around his boxy camera to shoot construction workers perched on the rising Empire State Building, the city’s evolving skyline and the impact of the Great Depression. 

Yet Browning’s legacy as a photographer went largely unnoticed for decades as Meistrich struggled to get a museum to show Browning’s work. 

Meistrich’s father worked for Browning’s film equipment rental and supply company, and when Browning died in 1961, his father bought Browning’s business and came across boxes and boxes of Browning’s photography collection. Browning’s widow told him to throw the photos out, but Meistrich’s father saved them and, almost three decades later, gave them to his son. 

While the organizations he contacted applauded Meistrich’s efforts and saw value in Browning’s work, none wanted to take the collection. After 30 years of rejections, Meistrich gave up and scheduled a dumpster. Two days before the collection’s demise, a friend suggested the New York State Museum, which then happily agreed to take Browning’s work. Finally seeing Browning’s photos on display has been tremendously emotional for Meistrich.

“When I first walked into the part of the exhibit that was his work, I started to cry,” he said. “I’ve always felt a responsibility to pass Irving’s work off to the future.”

Bronx-born Squillante found his inspiration beyond the city. While helping renovate a friend’s home in Rhinebeck in the late 1970s, the then-novice photographer spent his breaks shooting the Hudson River. 

“I am so glad that I recognized right away that this is a powerful subject,” said Squillante, who has spent the past five decades capturing the length of the Hudson.

He hopes his work will illuminate the importance of the river, which is the highlight of his commute on the Metro North train into the city for his work as a medical photographer. 

“I’m like a little kid in the candy store looking out the window at the river,” he said. “And some of these people don’t even know the river is there.”

His photography of the Hudson River has led to collaborations with environmental organizations. A few years ago, he went with John Lipscomb, boat captain for the nonprofit group Riverkeeper, to document General Electric dredging PCBs out of the Champlain Canal. In 2000, Squillante was hired by the state Department of Environmental Conservation to photograph biologists trapping, testing, banding and tracking bald eagles to study and revive the population.

“I didn’t make the decision to actively be an environmental photographer,” Squillante said. “It’s been really nourishing for me, though, to be able to protect our environment through my work.”

“Captured Gallery” is on display through Feb. 27 in the West Gallery at the New York State Museum.